Chapter 681

"It's really reassuring, my adorable students, are you so eager to meet me? I see that in your world, most students avoid teachers like the plague, don't they?"

"That's just because the students feel guilty after doing bad things; I'm merely carrying out heaven's will."

"What he said was completely righteous and confident."

Fang Zhiyan smiled, and as he did, his face, which had been writhing just beneath the skin, became even more terrifying; his tentacles snapped outward, water spray and waves collided, throwing up great sheets of foam, and the battle was about to erupt.

Golden Lightning Chains exploded in the air, accompanied by the stormy waves on the sea surface; Shen Zexi basically only uses the lightning element for attack, while the water element is mostly used by him for healing. Over time, others almost forgot that water's destructive power is never inferior to lightning.

Moreover, it took place on the sea, which is the best battlefield for him.

Qi Hengyu leapt to Fang Zhiyan's blind spot, Chen Mo Zhi's poison preemptively sealed Fang Zhiyan's retreat route, Luo Jinyou did his best to block attacks for everyone, while Yang Yixie was frantically catching teammates, scooping them up, and sending them where they needed to go.

It was just like playing an auto-chess game.

Yang Yixie seemed to have gotten a fresh playstyle from the real-life version of the game.

Xirensheng and Qi Hengyu both rely heavily on their high mobility to attack, unlike the stationary mages like Shen Zexi and Chen Mo Zhi; compared to using levitation devices, they spend more time stepping on Fang Zhiyan's tentacles.

Xirensheng's displacement skill is weird, Qi Hengyu's bodily control is too strong, but the levitation device forcibly taken over by Yang Yixie always shows up at the right moment; even if occasionally missed, Shen Zexi can promptly control the water element to fill the gap.

Thus, Yang Yixie also had more time to devote his energy to attack.

He stood in a safe zone high above, almost the safest position on the battlefield; his fingers tapped quickly, and the weapon nodes floating in the air lit up one by one according to his command, poised to strike.

Above the water surface, explosions of various-colored energy blasts kept erupting; on the water floated silvery-white tentacle fragments, and as these silvery-white fragments fell into the water, they continuously diffused a black unknown liquid outward, looking somewhat like ink.

Does this count as polluting the environment......

Yang Yixie couldn't help but fall into thought, but strictly speaking, this world has already been polluted by Mutation; the total Mutation Value invading the world is a constant, and in the absence of anyone constantly absorbing it, Mutation factors will keep diffusing with increasing entropy until the whole world is overtaken by Mutation.

Just like in the game, but because the Mutation present in their world now is quite limited, by that time the average Mutation Value across the whole world would absolutely not be able to break into the double digits.

What's more, the sea is also a frequent site of war and conflict.

The sea's inclusivity is strong, but not limitless.

What they could do might be to quickly resolve Fang Zhiyan, this Mutation Source, and then start salvaging corpses to prevent pollution?

Yang Yixie shook his head, tossing his ever more bizarre thoughts aside; his conscience always wavered high and low, and sometimes he wondered when he himself had become so sentimental.

All he needs to know now is one thing: Fang Zhiyan is a tremendous threat, and once it arrives in reality, it can destroy everything Yang Yixie holds dear.

That is enough.

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Su Jingming rushed over as soon as he heard what had happened here, but he was still a bit late; upon arriving, he saw only a mess everywhere, and also Mu Linyuan being pressed by the ashamed Xie Jingyan in the neighboring apartment to forcibly replenish his life energy.

He heard the situation here, especially that Shen Zexi and the others had been sent by Mu Linyuan to the sea, and couldn't help but ask.

"Are they really okay?"

Although sending their battlefield to the sea could avoid endangering ordinary people, Tianmian City's former geographical location lay inland, and in their world merely dealing with the Aberrant Species rampaging across the continent was already difficult enough.

To them, the sea is synonymous with taboo and danger.

Mu Linyuan merely shook his head: "Fang Zhiyan's Mutation Source certainly comes from the sea, but who says the sea is his home turf?"

No matter how you say it, he's an Nth‑cycle player, and Fang Zhiyan is also one of the bosses the Dome has placed out in the open, so he certainly has plenty of experience dealing with him.

Yet no matter how thoroughly a veteran player plans, he never anticipated that, at the moment closest to his success, an insignificant Undead would ruin all his schemes in an instant.

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The seawater was polluted by the battle; its originally clear light blue turned murky and foul, and Fang Zhiyan's body was completely exposed on the sea surface, held up by those constantly regenerating tentacles.

He had completely abandoned the gentlemanly elegance of his human disguise; his human form was swiftly twisted by Mutation in just a few seconds, Fang Zhiyan's entire body now the same silvery white as his tentacles, with dark‑red pupils, resembling a deep‑sea predator that has long dwelt in the abyss.

But since he was forcibly kept on the sea surface, he was nothing more than prey awaiting capture.

Fang Zhiyan's eyes never held any emotion, only the absolute rationality of a researcher.

In fact, his soul is being rejected by this world.

This body ultimately does not belong to him, even if the soul inside has already been devoured by him; when he lets his soul run rampant and Mutation twists and bursts this body, according to the world's law he should enter its cycle of reincarnation.

"Tsk, failed to interrupt the spell."

How come there are still invincibility frames during transformation?

Xirensheng's figure darted swiftly between the tentacles, flipping about like a sheet of paper, finally landing on the levitation device Yang Yixie had brought over; when Fang Zhiyan had just torn off his human skin and entered the second stage, he gave it a try, and the fact proved that sometimes you really can't just rush in.

He casually wiped the blood trickling from the corner of his mouth—otherwise who would dare to publicly perform a Bah‑la‑la? Even during transformation there are still energy blasts that strike from the shadows.

It's a shame that Xie Jingyan refused his invitation after ten moves; otherwise they'd have two big healers here—although even now it's not bad, one healer and one shield support who can also output, making the situation a bit stalemated.

Under Yang Yixie's command, countless bullets aimed at Fang Zhiyan fired in a volley, and the tiny fragments of his tentacles and surface mucus sprayed everywhere.

"If you look on the bright side, we've already reached the second stage—things usually come in threes, after all, a boss normally has at most three stages."

Moreover, they also have a second stage.

Yang Yixie raised his hand to summon a mech, which also joined the battle; but while controlling the mech he also had to provide its levitation‑device function, which still consumed too much energy for him, so on a battlefield at sea he still wanted to conserve his abilities as much as possible.

Now that we've reached the second stage, it's also time to unleash and reap.